Chinese ecommerce juggernaut Alibaba has set aside $500m to purchase up to 12% stake in Dailyhunt, a news aggregation platform and e-book store.

The proposed deal is reportedly in its final stages but not yet concluded, with Dailyhunt keeping its options open until the last minute in the hope of securing a better offer from other funding partners.

Existing investors include the likes of Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners India, Omidyar Network, Falcon Edge and ByteDance.

Dailyhunt is a darling of the Indian start-up scene, boasting that it has become the largest news and local language content application on the sub-continent with in excess of 155m app installs propagating 100,000 news items in 14 languages sourced from over 800 publisher partners.

Founded in 2009 as Newshunt by former Nokia executives Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni the business rebranded as Dailyhunt in 2015.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma took his diversification strategy to new heights earlier in the week by starring in a martial arts film produced by his own Alibaba Pictures.